Happy Australia Day! What better to feature on the blog than a card made with Australia’s own Darkroom Door designs. The fact is though, by the time I get out of bed on Australia Day the festivities over there are practically over. I am currently sixteen hours behind my family on the east coast of NSW!

I’ve been pairing stencils with a few different things lately. For today’s card I sponged through the Darkroom Door stencil, wildflowers, with black soot distress oxide ink. You can see the watermarks on the stenciled flowers, a chalky white effect particularly obvious with the oxide inks. But before I did that I began by sprinkling brusho over a panel of watercolour paper. I spritzed with water and let the patterns happen. Once that was dry I sponged the black soot oxide through the stencil then splattered some droplets of water on top. I dabbed them up fairly quickly to create the watermarks.

I cut a black mat to be a very narrow frame around the panel and added a black sentiment from the Darkroom Door Happy Birthday set.

For today’s rather bold card I started, as I often do with a masking fluid splattered panel. I continued, as I often do by sprinkling brusho powder over the panel then spritzing with water to activate it. I do tend to be a ‘chap of one idea’ at times don’t I? (Can you place that quote from one of my favourite book series?) This time the brusho was rose red and terracotta. Once dry, I splattered gold finetec paint over the panel and let it dry. I removed the masking fluid, trimmed the panel to a square then painted the edges with gold paint.

That was the easy part; after that the fiddliness factor rose considerably. I attached adhesive sheet to the back of the panel and die cut ‘hearts in circle’ from the centre of the panel and from a red adhesive backed foam sheet. I carefully saved the little hearts in formation on a piece of ‘press n seal’. I peeled the backing off the watercolour panel and attached it to the card front. Next I pressed the die cut adhesive backed foam hearts into each space in the die cut panel. Finally I peeled the backing off the die cut watercolour hearts and attached them on top of foam hearts. This was a little like completing a jigsaw puzzle.

Finally I die cut two sentiments from the ‘filled with love’ set out of watercolor paper, glued them together and painted them gold. I attached them over the heart circle so the card is somewhat bulky but nothing a little extra postage or a hand delivery can’t handle.

Ah, brusho, how I love thee! My cards on the Penny Black blog and here on my blog this week are all ‘love themed’ so it shouldn’t matter that it’s a paint that I’m in love with, should it? Brusho paint powders do such magical things I never tire of putting them to use.

To create this simple card I started with a piece of hot pressed watercolour paper already splattered with masking fluid. I sprinkled rose red brusho on one end of the panel and a mix of leaf green and olive green brusho over the other end. I spritzed with water to activate the paint and added more water and moved the paint around to create a varied coverage. Once it was completely dry I die cut a couple of roses using the Penny Black ‘rose’ die. I kept one die-cut complete and trimmed the rose and leaves off the other to arrange separately on a panel of linen textured cardstock.

I popped up the panel on a natural white card base and left it sentiment free to keep my options open.

I am over on The Foiled Fox blog today sharing this vintage rose card. You have seen me work with this sort of colour scheme before; I enjoy painting with the ink from a stamped image. In this case the stamp is the Penny Black, ‘red blush’. Although I worked mainly in vintage photo distress ink, I did give it a red blush with some Ost. Red brusho watercolour paint. You can read my whole process over on the Foiled Fox blog.

It’s taking me a while to get back into gear here on the blog but I have been busy planning my next class. Living as I do surrounded by winter beauty I often look a the sky or the landscape and wonder how I can turn it into a card. This is one such attempt. I looked at the sky one afternoon, because the sun sets in the afternoon around here, there is no waiting for evening! There was a pale pink glow above the horizon, a little blue then grey reaching up. I was managing to create some subtlety with this scene right up until the brusho shook out of the bottle rather more generously than intended! No matter, a lot of water and paper towel calmed things down again.

I started with a panel of hot pressed watercolour paper splattered with masking fluid. I painted some water across the panel where the horizon would be then sprinkled a little ost. red brusho above and blended it in with a paintbrush. Next I added grey brusho and blended that to fill the sky and finally some ost. blue brusho for some blue tones. I kept adding, blending and diluting until I was happy with the soft gradation of colour. While the sky was still damp I pressed just the small tree part of a landscape stamp out of the PB peaceful winter set repeatedly across the horizon inked with memento London fog ink.

I used the stamping platform to stamp and restamp the trees on the right from the PB snowy village set in black soot distress ink. As distress ink is water soluble I was able to paint over the stamping with water to make the image bolder and darker. I added a little blue brusho as I painted to give the tree some light and shadow. I dried the panel before painting another line of water, this time across the panel in line with the base of the tree trunk. Again I added the same brusho colours but got a bit more blue than I’d bargained for.

After drying that section I stamped just the left hand trees from the PB dressed in snow stamp again in black soot ink. I used a paintbrush to darken the stamped image and extend the trees a little more on the right. To finish I rubbed off the masking fluid and mounted the panel onto a white card base. All the supplies are linked below. I hope you have had a great week.

As we are over half way through December I thought I’d give you an update on Dressember. If you didn’t see my post earlier in the month I am participating in a campaign raising funds to end human trafficking. The campaign is called Dressember and participants all round the world commit to wear a dress every day of December while raising funds and awareness about the fight against modern day slavery.

We are now three weeks into Dressember and I have worn a dress every day. It doesn’t have to be a different dress, some advocates challenge themselves to wear the same dress all 31 days. The first week of December was relatively mild for Ottawa but it has since got cold, cold, cold. I am wearing my dresses but often with sweaters and woolly tights.

I have been very encouraged by the support I have received from the cardmaking community. Blog readers and instragram followers have donated to the cause, as have friends I know through my classes. Thank you so much! I am approaching my goal of $1000 but I’m not there yet. If you would like to donate to this worthy cause please click this link to go to my campaign page.

I have been sending one of my cards to each donor (if they share their address with me privately) and it has been exciting to send them locally to Ottawa and Toronto, to several locations in the States, to North Wales and to Melbourne, Australia.

I don’t often include people in my cards, the skin colour gives me trouble. I decided to sidestep that problem on these cards by keeping the girls black and white so it’s all about the dresses! The top dress was painted with purple brusho; I painted on a separate piece of watercolour paper then cut it out and attached it over the black stamped image. I also gave dimension to her necklace and bracelet with nuvo drops. The second dress is coloured with Faber-Castell polychromos pencils then given some shimmer with a clear wink of stella pen. It isn’t obvious in the photo but the fur trim is embossed with diamond white embossing powder to make it sparkly.

They’re simple cards I know, but I’d be happy to own either of those dresses.

I pulled out of few old favourites for this card, both stamps and techniques. I began by tearing a post-it note mask and positioning it across the bottom of the watercolour paper panel. I then stamped the large tree in onyx black versafine overlapping the mask at the bottom and the boy and sled also in onyx black just above the mask (the stamps and supplies are all listed below). I cut a circle from frisket film and placed it firmly over the tree branches then painted water across the panel from left to right where the sky would be.

I sprinkled yellow brusho sparingly into the water and blended it to create a ‘glow’ in the sky. Above and below the yellow I painted blue brusho then, while it was still wet, stamped trees in memento Danube blue ink. As the background was damp the impressions have soft blended edges. I mixed a little blue brusho with water on a palette then painted a line of blue below the stamped boy to create a shadowy area where he was walking. I used water to dilute the colour as I extended the colour up towards the horizon. I added more blue below the boy and the tree and diluted that with water.

To create the shadow of the boy and his sled I inked the stamp with memento Danube blue and stamped it onto an acrylic block. I stamped the block into the damp watercolour paper where it created a blurred mirror image. I painted straight shadow for the tree also in Danube blue ink. When the ink and paint were dry I removed the moon mask and attached the panel to a natural white card base.